Dave Weigel thinks this is the proper response to the “revelations” about the Kochtopus*:
Toss a hunk of Rearden metal at a D.C. libertarian organization or scholar and you’ll hit something connected to the Kochs. The brothers fund successful internships and fellowships via the Koch Associate Program, and every summer, dozens of budding libertarians in Washington work for think tanks before coming home to a group house nicknamed “Kochwood.” Koch interns are placed (often, not always) at Reason, Cato, the Competitive Enterprise Institute, and other libertarian organizations while attending classes on media and economics. What’s so sinister about this? Nothing—at least until the Tea Party started winning, and then liberals started getting very annoyed.
So pre-empt the coming exposes. Libertarians: Embrace the Kochs! Kochs: Embrace the Tea Parties! You are, Kochs and libertarians alike, among the few activists who should feel no need whatsoever to apologize for wealth and success. (emphasis mine)
Translation: libertarians should deliberately discredit themselves in the eyes of anyone who is not already on their side. Oh, and also completely ignore anyone pointing out the blind spots in their own ranks.
From nearly the moment it got any public traction, the Tea Party “movement” flushed any consistency down the toilet. Consider that at one point Thomas Knapp started a “Boston Tea Party” that was to be an actual political party. This got shoved aside by a parallel (albeit way better funded) movement claiming a similar name, which conveniently rose critique of government power with a laser focus on what the Donkey Crips did in power versus the Dixie Pachyderm Piru. That parallel “movement” exists now as little more than a contradictory right-wing quivering ball of fear, locked & loaded to vote Republican.
Considering the result of political gridlock, and how the worst things the government here does are the ones that get “bipartisan” support, I can understand why less radical people may opt to play each side against each other. But this isn’t a deliberate “when A has one branch, hand B the other for a monkey wrench, and vice versa” strategy, no. Dave is saying to take the tea party — and by extension the Kochs — as if they are we and we are they. What I want to ask him is this: who is this “we” you speak of?
The quip about “NOW liberals are annoyed” is a surprise to me, since by now the annoyance is solidly partisan. Besides, pretty much anyone who frequents web forums & blogs who could place themselves anywhere on a spectrum of libertarian views knows that progressives have always been annoyed by libertarians. Problem is, the type of connections & political influence the Koch brothers have obtained are exactly what they point at when asked why.
As I stated in comments at Roderick’s place, whether their disproportionate influence on a narrow section of corporate regulation (namely, less of it, even though corporate status itself is a distortion of the market) versus all other issues (Cato Institute, after all, also advocates for an end to the War on Drugs & against a militaristic foreign policy…) is a matter of playing Telephone or not doesn’t really matter. Public credibility is important, and losing it costs more than even 10 Kochs could pay back.
As for “apologizing for wealth”, it depends on how they got it. In the long run, rent-seekers have more to worry about than apologies…
(* – The origin of this term should sum up just how false the libertarianism-as-one-note assumption is.)
Perfectly said. Libertarians always seem to consist of factions whose effective end goal is to farm out the movement to other interests.